“My child has been racially profiled,” she said of her son, whom she welcomed in 1994 with her since-deceased high school sweetheart. “He was in Glendale, California and did exactly everything the cops told him to do, including letting them illegally search his car. It was bogus because they didn’t give him the ticket for what he was pulled over for.”

“Then he’s at University of Southern California, the school that I was going to transfer him to, when police stopped him for having his hands in his pockets,” Henson continued of her one child. “So guess where he’s going? Howard University. I’m not paying $50K so I can’t sleep at night wondering is this the night my son is getting racially profiled on campus.”

As her son continues his education at Howard, a historically black college in Washington, D.C., and works on a potential career as a writer, Henson is having a major moment with her celebrated role of Cookie Lyon on Fox’s Empire opposite Terrence Howard and rising stars Trai Byers, Jussie Smollett, and Bryshere Y. Gray.

“This journey is not over,” she told Uptown of her career. “I’ve come a long way from ‘Aye, that’s that girl from Baby Boy’ to now people know how to pronounce my name. But I’m just scratching the surface. For whatever reason, God gave me this life, and I’m not gon’ f–k it up.”